Uh, I have kids, and so I've spent a lot of time around kids and around other parents, and you are very much on to something.
Whether they have kids because they felt like they needed to or because they wanted an heir or whatever, they don't actually want to hang out with developing humans. They want the idea of kids. They want the Christmas card and the pictures on the desk and the Instagram picture.
They don't want the baby screaming for 5 hours straight because it's too cold out to walk to the store and get more baby ibuprofen for the ear infection on Friday night and your partner has the car. They don't get that the baby is crying because she's literally never hurt worse than this in her tiny life, and they don't get that their toddler has never been sadder than when her favorite toy broke, and that she really didn't know she would break it if she did the thing she just did. That the 4-year-old is crying because the world is too big and too overwhelming and she has no control over where she goes or what she does most of the time, and that the 14-year-old isn't telling them anything about her life because they told her ten years ago to shut up or they'd give her something worth crying about, so she knows they don't value her real feelings, only the ones she's supposed to have.
And they don't want to get any of it. And it fucking sucks that people who don't actually WANT kids feel like they have to have them, or have them to have something smaller than themselves to bully, or have kids as a status symbol. It all just blows, and mostly because:
Kids are people, and most people are actually pretty fucking rad, if given the opportunity to be.
There are a lot of good parents out there, and then there are the parents who had kids because they thought they had to, or wanted someone to boss around, or whatever. And like... even if you thought you wanted kids, you can quickly find out that it actually blows to be a parent in a nuclear family setup, and get really burned out on being a parent. Kids are much better raised by an extended family. That's how we're wired. And like... we broke it. We broke it, and it breaks parents and it hurts kids.